Playing To Remember
by ParaCaerOuVoar
Summary: What do you think when you see Greg House? A cripple, a jerk, an addict, a doctor. A soulful musician, playing to remember?


This is my first time writing for House, so I hope I get him right.

This is a future fic, set fifteen years in the future. I dunno, I really don't have a timeframe set out. Also bear in mind I haven't seen season 5 yet.

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Music filled the auditorium at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and flowed out into the corridors. Patients and doctors alike were drawn to the room, filling the seats and standing in the doorways.

Dr Gregory House was almost sixty, but he looked no different than he had fifteen years ago, save for the hair, which had turned completely grey. He sat at the piano, his piercing blue eyes hidden behind closed lids, playing for those who had died, and one who hadn't.

He played for Amber, the first one to die. It was his fault, and he still regretted it to this day. He had lost more than an old colleague that day. He had lost a friend. Wilson had walked out of the hospital and out of his life that day, and he hadn't seen him since. His fingers danced across the keys, mourning the loss of someone who had made his old friend so happy.

The next to die was Eric. The effects of the disease he had caught in 2006 finally caught up with him, and he suffered a stroke three years later. The melody changed to something deep and soulful, much like the man himself. He would never admit it, but House had always admired him for standing up to him, telling him when he was being an ass, and when he was wrong. He was a damn good doctor, one House had been sorry to lose, well before his time.

Five years after Eric's death, Larry Kutner was shot in a store after trying to save the life of the owner of the store which was held up while he was in there. House himself had been shot as well, but only in the foot. Not that he cared; he tried so hard to save Kutner and the store owner. But he couldn't save them. The melody became something filled with self-sorrow, at losing his friend, at not being the person who could have saved them, at not being a superhero.

No one really knew what had happened to Chris Taub. He just disappeared one day. He was put into Missing Persons, but there was nothing. Eventually, five years after his vanishing act, a body appeared. DNA matched it, and it was another case closed, another notch on a detective's belt. And gradually Chris was forgotten. But not by House. He never forgot. Everyone lies, but no-one forgets the death of a friend, and, though it might not seem that way, that's what it was.

Alison and Robert died together. No illness, no puzzle for House to work out, no one to blame. Just a couple whose car failed to stop in time one winter night, hitting a patch of black ice and skidding into a river. The ME told House that they died instantly, leaving behind a two year old son, named Eric, for their lost friend. Social services took Eric, despite Lisa's efforts, she wanted to raise the boy knowing who his parents were, what pure, good people they had been. But they ruled her an unfit mother, due to the numbers of hours she worked, and the depression she had struggled with for twenty years. She had kept it secret from everyone, even the people she was closest to. Even House. The self sorrow morphed into something filled with emotion in every note. Never had he met two people who had loved each other more.

The final so called 'Duckling' to die was 13. She had a real name, she must have done, but right now House couldn't remember it. She would forever be 13, unlucky for some, certainly for her. A lifelong carrier of the Huntington's gene, when it finally manifested, two years ago, she fought the disease for eight months. Eight months of watching her own body deteriorate in front of her. On the night of June 15, 2022, she injected herself with a fatal dose of corticosteroids. House found her the next day, and the image was forever burned into his brain. Jerky notes accompanied this memory, quirky and different, just like her.

A lull in the music gave him time to compose himself. And then he played the piece he had played for fifteen years. The original music. He played for James. James had always been there, calmly listening to House's harebrained ideas, taking everything in, and then telling him he couldn't do that for _x _amount of reasons. James was a lot of things to House. He was a hopeless romantic, married three times, divorced three times. He was Chinese food on Christmas day. He was a friend, a brother, and someone with which House could truly be himself.

A shining tear slid down his cheek, the only one he would shed that night. Every year, for fifteen years he had sat at this piano and played for the people he had lost, watching the front row slowly empty of his friends and fill up with strangers who weren't strangers. People he saw every day, doctors, nurses, surgeon, the odd patient wandering the corridors, faithful IV drip rolling behind them, like a dog on a lead.

He opened his eyes and looked down the crowded room to the door at the back. Standing there was Lisa Cuddy. The woman who had done so much for him, for the hospital and everyone in it. She had stood by them all, through Eric's illness, the pain of losing Eric from the close knit family they had formed, she had helped him fight his Vicodin addiction, and today, for the first time in fifteen years, he was playing the piano one hundred percent Vicodin free. His head was clearer than it had been in years, and that was why he was so surprised when he started seeing things.

James Wilson had left this hospital fifteen years ago, and had never come back. So what was he doing, standing next to Lisa, brown eyes staring intently into House's cobalt ones?

His melody came to an end, and he stood, ignoring the thunderous applause that always came after his performance. He didn't do it for the applause, he did it to remember. He was playing to remember.

He walked slowly down the aisle in the middle of the auditorium, leaning heavily on his cane, coming to a stop in front of his two oldest friends.

'You're back.' he said simply.

James nodded, before walking forward, a limp mirroring House's and folded House into a hug.

House's friend was finally back.

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So what did people think? A little depressing maybe? Reviews are love, and possibly sequels.


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